Jane B McWilliams, LWV Observer
All members of the council were present.
Surface Water Protection. At the February 10 meeting, City Engineer Katy Gehler presented information about the work the city is planning in order to create a surface water management ordinance. Tonight, the council approved the agreement for engineering services with Barr Engineering at a cost not to exceed $65,000. Previously, water protection policies were scattered throughout the city code. The plan now is to consolidate them in one chapter. The new ordinance will address these goals: continue to preserve Northfield’s rural heritage; be a good steward of the natural environment, develop and approve a city-wide sustainability plan; protect and enhance environmentally significant areas, protect and enhance water quality. A Technical Steering Committee composed of two St. Olaf faculty (Paul Jackson, John D Schade), DNR representative Hugh Valient, Cannon River Watershed Partnership Executive Director Beth Kallestad, Northfield GIS Technician Brian Welch, and the city engineer, will guide the development of the ordinance with input from the council boards and commissions, other advisory groups and the general public.
Because of the regional nature of this issue, many groups are interested in being informed. Last Saturday’s well-attended session at the Bridgewater Township Hall, to review the work of a volunteer committee’s work on protecting Rice Creek, is a case in point. Gehler said she planned to set up a mailing list for people interested in this issue.
To see the staff report and steering committee plan, go to: http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/assets/p/Packet160.pdf and scroll down to #8a and 8b. To get on the mailing list for future information: http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/projects/worksengineering/2010/01/01/2010_stormwater_ordinance_development
Other action during the regular meeting included adoption of the Safe Routes to School Plan ( http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/projects/worksengineering/2009/01/01/safe_routes_to_schools); and adoption of the Trunk Highway 3/Trunk Highway19 Modal Integration Study prepared by Bolton and Menk. Of interest in the Consent Agenda was approval of gifts and donations to the city in 2009, comprising seven pages and totaling $428,757.33. Finance Director noted that the list doesn’t include donations of time, supplies or materials. To see the list: http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/assets/2/2009ccr013-Gifts-Attch-A.pdf
Councilor Jon Denison requested that approval of second reading of the building Code Board of appeals for one more year be placed in the regular agenda so that he could again vote against the measure.
Mayor Mary Rossing adjourned the regular meeting at 8:07.
WORK SESSION
Annexation and Joint Annexation Agreements. City Attorney Chris Hood and Community Development Director Brian O’Connell joined the council and City Administrator Joel Walinski at the table to review the state policies on annexation and some common practices for preparing for and negotiating annexations. Hood provided an information piece for the council: http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/assets/b/Basics-of-annexation-Attachment-No.-1.pdf. The document explained three basic forms: Automatic Annexation by Ordinance; Negotiated/Orderly Annexation: and Contested-Case Annexation. Drawing from his experience working on annexations on behalf of cities, Hood provided examples of agreements and challenges he had encountered. He noted that there may be pitfalls in an orderly annexation agreement, and that contested cases often come from poorly drafted documents. “You need to avoid ambiguity,” he cautioned. Success really depends on what is going to work best for the city and the township, which requires a lot of give and take.
The conversation became focused on land use planning. Hood noted there might be not only competing values between jurisdictions, there may be competing policies. Counties may have one set of land use policies, townships another and cities still a third. Hood admitted that annexation could be a “lousy process.” At some point, if it wants to keep taxes down, protect ag land and the environment, the state may have to take over planning. Now, however, “you must work together as local units of government to do what the state can’t do”.
Council Betsey Buckheit said that annexing a lot of land without a vision for what you want to do with it doesn’t make sense. How can we assure that we preserve ag land, for example? She said she’d like to know the range of controls that exist, not just what is in law, but what other places are doing. Hood said there is an advantage to having a joint planning process which could result in consistency of development – but this depends on the working relationships of the governmental units.
Rossing said that the next step would be looking at guiding principles and Walinski said this would be on the March 9 agenda in order to finish the conversation.
Council Goals 2010. The packet contained a summary report from the council’s January 23 planning session ( http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/assets/g/Goals-Summary-Report.pdf). Walinski supplemented this with his own analysis and a format for the council to use to provide guidance for accomplishing three of the council’s four goals. (The council lacked time to get to Goal #4 at their planning session.) He asked that the council review the action steps, verify the priorities, assign the action steps to staff or boards and commissions and get the information back to him by February 26 in order to prepare for the March 2 council meeting. He will schedule an additional session with the facilitators (Richard and Irina Fursman of the Global Synergy Group) to work on Goal 4: “The council will implement a systematic approach to problem solving and decision-making.”
Communication. Staff asked for direction for improving community communication as identified at the planning session: update city website; establish process for citizens and advisory group to bring ideas forward; and complete Laserfiche Electronic Document, Management (which would need to be accomplished before web updates). Radio station KYMN has made a proposal to the city to continue the live streaming of council and commission meetings. Walinski circulated information comparing the services and costs of having meetings streamed by KYMN with similar services by Granicus, a system used by a number of other cities in Minnesota. In addition, he distributed information about Laserfiche. He noted that the city is several years behind many cities in implementing this latter resource, which would make information more accessible to the public; assist sharing of information between departments; and would assure preservation of records in the event of a local disaster.
Money from the city’s Cable TV Fund is available for both these services. The anticipated annual revenue from that source is $204,681, with expenditures of $153,066, leaving an operating surplus of $51,615. None of the documents Walinski distributed are available on line at the moment. It was not clear to this observer what direction the council provided in respect to the streaming issue. There seemed to be concern about how valuable this is to the community, as well as about spending diminishing recourses on it. The operating surplus from this fund may also be used for the general fund. It should be noted that Walinski said the staff calculated a local government aid reduction of $739,000 in the governor’s proposed budget for the city! At this point, every penny counts.
The mayor adjourned the work session at 10:30 p.m.
Comments
Bridgewater and Waterford residents had their own township meetings Feb. 16, so it's good to have an observor report. This is the second work session this month which included annexation-related materials.
Jane: Thanks, as always for your reporting, and this was approximately a 4 hour session!
Do you get 'overtime' duty pay?
What is the goal #4 that has still to be discussed? and there was also some mention of not completing the discussion of Goal #1. Could you please explain a bit more on those Council Goals?
There was one statement by the City Administrator that I didn't think should have gone by the council with complete face-value acceptance (I watched at home on KYMN) and that was that 'they' have made all the personnel cuts they can (10% in the last year, I think was said) and that further cuts would have to be in services to citizens.
I think a statement like that needs to be supported; i.e., we have some staff at city hall that could possibly be replaced by contracted services... would that be cost effective or can only cuts across the entire city come up with the needed deficit dollars?
I must admit that although I understand there have been wage freezes, or step increase freezes , for city employees, many people are taking cuts in their salaries, going to fewer work days, or if building or business owners, not receiving revenues at previous levels...
Should we consider asking city employees to also cut back their income, when many others are experiencing that?